"In comments to the Voice of America’s news website, Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior UN counterterrorism official who is now an adviser to the nonprofit Counter Extremism Project, said: 'The presence of Al-Qaeda in Iran is a sort of a chip that the Iranians have. They’re not entirely sure how or when they might play it but . . . it was something that they considered to have potential value.”'"

"'The presence of al-Qaida in Iran is a sort of a chip that the Iranians have,' said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior United Nations counterterrorism official who is now an adviser to the nonprofit Counter Extremism Project.

'They're not entirely sure how or when they might play it but … it was something that they considered to have potential value,' Fitton-Brown told VOA, adding that al-Adel running the terror group from Tehran is 'not that big a change from what the situation was before Zawahiri was killed.'

'Al-Qaida has always been a consultative organization,' he said. 'They have a Shura, a leadership, and Saif was already part of it. He was already a very important voice in that leadership. He's now a more important voice in that leadership.'"

CEP Senior Advisor Radek Sikorski writes: "On 17 October, the Council of the European Union agreed to a new package of human rights-related sanctions against 11 Iranian individuals and four entities linked to Tehran’s crackdown on protesters and the death of Amini – including Iran’s morality police. It is in this context that there is a need to reflect on how Europe’s narrowly focused pursuit of a nuclear deal (officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) has prevented it from taking meaningful action against ongoing human rights violations in Iran."

CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler on Iranian shelling of Kurdish groups in Iraq's Kurdistan region: "I'm not yet aware that there are major troop movements across the border, which would be something new...This was a warning shot against those Kurdish groups to not to try to cross the border into Iran or not to try to do any attacks inside Iran while the regime deals with the unrest." 

"Hans-Jakob Schindler, Sr. Director of the Counter Extremism Project, says the Iranian regime is concerned that the "chaos that this regime created" could spill over into ethnic unrest."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie is not shocking. That’s the shocking thing about it. In due course we will see whether, as is alleged, his assailant was acting in conjunction with the Iranian Islamist impulse to attack the apostate – a widening net, knit faster by our own secular fanatics, which  drags in and dehumanises anyone who dissents from a fundamentalist worldview."

"Ambassador Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), said his thoughts and prayers are with Rushdie and his family after the 'pointless' attacks on his life.

'Rushdie is a free speech advocate and has lived under the threat of assassination since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, issued a fatwa against him in 1989. A supporter of terrorism, Rushdie has refused to be intimidated.His courage and commitment to his values ​​should be applauded in this difficult moment.'"